6 Weeks
by Lor-tan
Summary: Tom Riddle has lost something. And he desperately misses it. Harry, on the other hand, is wondering why Tom can't hear him saying that he loves him.
1. Chapter 1

**This story was written for the Houses Competition, Year Five, Round Six**

**House/Team: Snakes**

**Class Subject: Defence Against the Dark Arts**

**Category: Drabble**

**Prompt: Nox**

**Word Count: 768**

**Beta: EaGLes41574**

xXx

Life has been proven once again to be a horribly fickle thing. Tom Riddle knew this. It's just never hurt quite this much.

The bed next to his lies empty. The glass of water on the nightstand has remained untouched for too many nights in a row; the dreamless sleep potion mixed into it has gathered like a film at the top.

The sight of it makes his chest feel like he's caving in, so instead all he can do is stare stubbornly down at his homework, waiting for the door to open and someone to say, "Tom, come on. I need help with my potions essay and our table in the library is empty."

He misses sitting in the sun surrounded by books, smiling indulgently down at a head bent over a textbook as its owner mumbles the words aloud in an attempt to understand. He used to hate that habit. Now he wants nothing more than to hear it again.

_Just one more time. Please_.

It doesn't happen. No one opens the dorm room door, and his work for History of Magic is finished too quickly. Then he has no excuse to stay secluded like this, and instead he has to get up and actually leave his depressing nest of blankets and ink-stained pillows, careful not to look too closely at the empty bed in the room. He casts a Nox as he leaves, and almost out of habit looks back into the now dark room to double check that there's no one still in it, lounging on his bed instead of their own and flipping through Quidditch magazines.

The Common Room is as quiet as ever for this time of the day, the only ones there Tom's year mates and a few upperclassmen. There are only whispers, quiet conversations, and open books.

He feels deafened by it. The absence of "Hey Tom, come over here!" hurts.

Eyes follow him. Concerned eyes, from his followers and most of the females. Calculating, from a few upper classmates. None of them are the right shade of warm green, and none of them quite the right kind of friendly.

He casts an Audite, just to have something to hear. He vaguely recognises the song - something muggle - and he hates how, as he walks out the door, he recognises it as something he's listened to before, with someone else.

_Can we go back. For anything. Anything at all, just to go back._

He goes to the library on his own, and is relieved to find it practically empty. He goes to their table, and he stares at the familiar names on the spines of books surrounding him, and wondering why he came. The Holloween Feast will start in half an hour. He could have just stayed waiting in the common room. Lucretia would no doubt be thrilled to have him back, Orion too. Abraxas would ask annoying questions. Theodore would give him a sympathetic grin, and try to distract Abraxas. It would be almost like normal, save for one glaring absence, an empty hole on the couch next to Tom that would never again be filled.

Yet here he was instead. Terribly alone.

He has a vague recollection of sitting here as First Years, when they were still stunned at the prospect of other people with magic. There had been just the two of them. They didn't have any other friends yet. They'd been alone for so long, raised in the same cold grey room at the orphanage, and off of only each other's company. He remembers spending nights in the same bed, games of checkers with missing pieces, trading clothes, keeping collections of dead insects, running through the nearby park, laying on the hard concrete and wondering what their futures would be like.

He never imagined this. Neither of them did. At the time, they'd just been sitting in a library, at a particularly sunny table by the window that they both rather liked, kicking their legs and wondering what would happen now, in an entirely new world.

He remembers making promises to both be great. Tom wanted to be the Greatest Wizard of the Century. Harry wanted to be a famous Quidditch star.

He remembers just days ago. Harry flying a bit too high. A bit too far into the wind, on a broom that's been around for centuries. The school really needed to replace their broomsticks.

He remembers watching the spells holding it together slip off the old broom, watching it crack beneath the strain.

He remembers screaming.

_Let's go back, let's go back to the start._


	2. Chapter 2

**This story was written for the Houses Competition, Year Five, Round Six**

**House/Team: Snakes**

**Class Subject: Defence Against the Dark Arts**

**Category: Standard**

**Prompt: Waking up as a ghost**

**Word Count: 1,478**

**Beta: EaGLes41574**

xXx

_I love you. I love you. I love you. IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIlo- this hurts. Tom, this hurts._

It's not a lie. Pain is not a new thing in Harry's life; he's been raised alongside it. He's been beaten and starved and slapped and kicked and shoved. He's had skinned knees and bruises shoulders and black eyes and head wounds and stomach aches. He's laid in bed as fever saps his strength and tortures him with agonizingagonising steadiness, not enough to justify him crying out, but too much to ignore. He's had rocks thrown at his face, thrown by childish hands that should not yet know how to hate. He's watched dully as his food is taken, knowing he can't fight back and knowing that he'll ache with hunger pains that night.

Nothing has ever hurt as much as this.

_I love you._

When Harry first opened his eyes, he could feel it. He wasn't sure what it was, but it was... off. He felt... cold. His chest felt empty. His neck felt hollow. His fingers felt stiff and tingly. All around, he felt frozen. His eyes didn't stick when he opened them like they usually did when he woke up. He felt weightless, not like the weightlessness from flying, when he was up in the sky breathing thin air and glorifying in the wind lifting him up like a ribbon in the wind.

He just felt nothing. He felt like he had no substance.

Hair hung in his face. That wasn't new. His hair was always in his face.

This wasn't his hair though. It was grey, a slightly darkened film clung to the edges, blurring it and making it look hazy. The hair shifted, caught in a breeze he couldn't feel.

He attempted to move it, get whatever or whoever's hair out of his face. His arm came closer than he expected, lifting easily. His mind felt drowsy and still heavy with sleep, but apparently, his body didn't. Those potions he got from that Prince kid must really have worked. He couldn't recall a single nightm- oh.

His hand was grey too. But not the darkened grey of the hair, though the same slight haze clung to it. It was more white. Like clouds before they gathered much rain. He thought he could maybe see the bones beneath his skin.

His mouth opened, but no sound came out.

_I love you but you won't look at me._

He found Tom immediately, because, why wouldn't he? Tom, of all the people he's ever known, is the one who needs to see him like this. Because if Tom can't see what's happened to him, how would he even know if it's true?

He finds his best friend alone in their dorm room, huddled under blankets and staring off into the nothingness.

To be entirely honest, he's not sure how he got there. He doesn't remember saying the password, and he's almost certain he didn't float through any walls. He's just... there.

The room is quiet. Too quiet. Tom is too quiet.

The bathroom door is open, the dull light illuminating what looks like a broken inkpot pot on the floor, the glass cracked and glittering, and the dark blue, almost black ink long since soaked into the carpet. Books lay strewn about, opened and then abandoned, kicked to the edge of the bed. The bed hangings look as though they've been ripped to pieces, shredded by anxious, trembling hands. His favourite jumper is crumpled up in Tom's arms and held away from his body, as if his best friend wants it near but can't quite bear to look at it. One of the beds has obviously been hit with a few blasting curses. Abraxas', he notices.,

He feels like he's seeing something he shouldn't. Seeing Tom like that felt like a taboo, a terrible secret. It was like seeing the mighty knight without his armour, the phoenix at its moment of birth. Tom looks laid bare and scraped raw.

If Harry didn't know better, he'd say that Tom was the one who was dead.

But no - that ribcage is faintly moving, and Tom's skin is only pale, not ghostly white.

He stumbles closer, trips and doesn't feel any pain, kneels in front of where Tom's rusty red eyes stare off into the distance like the abyss holds the answer to every question ever asked. He waves his hands frantically and tries to force his mouth to form words, tries to force a sound to escape his lips.

The room remains quiet, and Tom stares right through Harry's head like he isn't even there.

_Look at me! I love you, Tom, just- just please, look at me, for God's sake! Please! I love you!_

No one sees him. It's not just Tom. Harry is invisible.

Well, that isn't completely true. When he encounters Moaning Myrtle whilst wandering around one day, she shrieks and hides in her bathroom again.

Apparently, the other dead can see him, at least. Which is probably a blessing, but... but he'd rather Tom could.

He'd rather anyone living could. Maybe they could tell Tom for him, since his own voice has been stolen. He could write it down or try to signal it with his hands for them to tell him. Maybe they could just look at him and understand. He feels sick with love enough that it must show in his eyes, he thinks, even if his eyes are now cloudy grey and dull.

_I love you._

He's resorted to following Tom around, hoping that maybe the other boy will catch a glimpse of him out of the corner of his eye, and then this strange limbo will be over.

He'd never even heard of a ghost that couldn't be seen. He knows he's not the only one, though, because now he can see others just like him.

Huddling in the corners of the hall outside of Transfiguration is a young woman cracked to one side at her waist, grey gore leaking from her stomach down her floral dress.

In the Slytherin Common Room, next to the fireplace, a young boy sits with a book, smoky blood splattered across his mottled face.

In the Great Hall, an entire host of ghosts he's never seen before dwell.

By the lake, a few peek their heads above the surface.

None of them can speak.

They're all too faint for that, too barely-there. The imprints they left on the world have something wrong with them. Some of them were too young to die. Some were too weak. Some, like Harry, probably don't know why they're there.

They just are.

_My throat hurts. I can't scream forever, Tom._

The downside of following Tom around is that it hurts.

Not physically. But just watching Tom struggle hurts Harry in ways he didn't even know he could be hurt. He wants to yell, to scream out the words to Tom, to tell him something, anything to get him acting like himself again instead of the quiet broken doll he's become, but the sounds get choked and gagged before he can make them.

He has no choice but to watch in silence.

And it's agony to watch what Tom has become. Is becoming. And all because of him.

His best friend now acts more angry, more desperate than before. If he doesn't, it's because he's acting empty. Their friends drift away one by one, and Harry can't quite blame them, but he still hates them for it.

Tom looks over his shoulder constantly, as if checking that Harry is following, and he is, but he knows that Tom doesn't know that, and he knows that every time Tom does it, it hurts him a little.

He hates sitting beside him in bed at night, tucked inside the bubble of the silencing charm his friend now casts every night, listening to him scream and rage and sob.

But that doesn't mean he'll ever stop.

He never will.

Tom may not be able to see him, but Harry will be there anyways, always and forever, watching over him and crying alongside him. He's going to be behind him every step of the way, every struggle, every choice, every fit and tantrum and tragedy and deep dark night. He's going to watch Tom grow up when he couldn't, watch him drive himself into a hole trying to find a way to bring Harry back, a way to get past Death itself. He'll see him rise up and fall down, lose friends and replace them with followers, strike terror into hearts and souls and bargain away his own.

He'll be there, watching and waiting.

Until death shall they join.

_I lied. I can scream forever. And I will, if it's for you. Because I want you to hear me say it. Just once more._

_I love you, Tom._


End file.
